Hickory Global Partners said it partnered with eCommission Solutions to provide members with discounted access to the commission-recovery application it now brands as Hickory Commission Recovery.
Beyond commission recovery, Hickory officials said ECS technology, combined with internally developed tools and those of other companies, would provide members with data to measure the value of the consortium.
"Consortium and affiliate models have been rife with unfulfilled promises and unproven claims for both suppliers and agency members," said Hickory's executive vice president, Ted Cromwell.
"Hickory represents the evolution of the consortium. By pioneering with technology partners like ECS, we will be able to reliably measure ROI for both agency and supplier partners, aggregate data in one place and report in real time and accurately on utilization, consumption, pay performance and untapped opportunity."
Hickory's senior vice president of digital marketing and product development, Brian Harniman, said, "ECS gives us a base of data that we're going to stick into our own database to build reports that can be sorted and filtered in new and different ways. The data has never really been aggregated [to prove the value of the consortium to members.] We're going to use ECS as one of our first partners to pull that data back in and do new and powerful things to directly benefit our partners."
For example, Harniman said, officials expect to use the technology to show members how to alter bookings to improve their bottom lines.
The Traina Companies, which also owns Intravel, in May purchased the 37-year-old Hickory consortium and hired a new management team.
Cromwell and Harniman said the team has been building technologies to allow both agency and supplier partners to "accurately measure the value of participation in the consortium channel, as well as benchmark performance against competitors and optimize revenue and profitability."
Hickory by the fourth quarter plans to release to agency partners an extranet called Hickory PartnerHQ, with reporting on negotiated rate programs, competitive benchmarking and ROI analysis of program participation.
The full Hickory Business Intelligence suite that consolidates data from ECS, suppliers and other industry partners is expected to launch in January.
Cromwell said Hickory officials since May have focused on building the infrastructure for its new consortium model and now plans to take it to members, who hold about 1,300 ARC numbers, and prospects.
"The sales processes are beginning today. But we're not going to be a shotgun effect. We're taking a very strategic approach to the marketplace to make sure we're providing to our partners and our partners are providing to us what it takes [to deliver to suppliers,]" Cromwell said.
The 1,300 ARC numbers represent the "business we bought. The business we're building now will be reflected in the numbers five to six months from now, and that's the story for me. That's the number I care about," said Harniman.
Corporate travel represented about 75% of Hickory's $2 billion in 2010 travel sales and remains its focus, Cromwell said.lication The Beat.
This report originally appeared in sister publication The Beat.